Emerging HR - Challenges and Recommendations

  

Emerging Human Resource

Challenges and Recommendations

Source: media.licdn

Introduction:

      Humans in their nature have always been complicated and very different, what works for some doesn’t work for others, and having to manage them has always been a difficult and not simple task. The constant changes from artificial intelligence, climate change, and pandemics have disrupted organizations and caused human resources managers to think differently about their work and to adjust to any changes that might happen. Whether you're a small, family-owned business or a much larger corporation, HR managers will face some difficulties when it comes to managing employees. In today’s tough and rapidly changing world, HR managers are on their toes to find solutions that work for both employers and employees while facing all the recent trends in the market. After hours of reading and researching, I have managed to list some of the most common issues and priorities that HR practitioners will be facing:

1- Talent Acquisition and Attracting New Talent:

      Attracting and retaining the right talent for the right position is not something new, it has always been the focus for businesses. However, the world facing many changes, and organizations keep adapting, making this task harder and more complicated to do in the near future.  

      Acquiring the right talent is the most important key to growth. Hiring was - and still is - the most important thing we do (Benioff, 2018)

      Attracting talents starts from the first stage of the filling vacancies process. HR practitioners should analyze and market the vacancies where the target talent is most likely to be, i.e. Linked-in, word of mouth, connections, etc.… During the screening and hiring process, HR needs to focus on how well the candidates will fit with the organization and how willing are they to adapt to changes before evaluating their fit for the position.

2- Employee Retention and Rewarding:

      Hiring the right talent is an important and sometimes hard step. However, retaining the right and high-performed talent will be a harder task shortly. As the organizations' competitors grow and offer competitive compensation packages, it will be harder to hire and reward the performers to build employee loyalty. For organizations to keep ahead of their competitors and to recruit talent, they need to offer generous reward packages to employees, give them the opportunity to continually update their skills, engage them in decision-making, and develop socializing opportunities. (Society of Human Resource Management, 2021)

3- Flexible Work Arrangements:

      Millennials are entering the job market and they have a different perspective on work than previous generations. When they apply for the job, they focus and place premiums on delivering results rather than working a set time, and most of them prefer working in a flexible environment. that will allow employees to work how they wish and be productive without affecting the company. The 2020 COVID pandemic is a live example of that. HR practitioners and companies should be ready to provide these arrangements for their required talents, as they might be the deciding factor for candidates. 

4- Future Leaders Preparation:

      Employees look at their supervisors and managers as a source of inspiration, which is good for the organization to train and prepare the next generation of leaders, therefore the companies should invest in creating relations between the managers and the front-end employees. Studies show that employees that have poor relations with their managers are four times more likely to quit and leave the organization than those who have good relations and feel that their managers are highly skilled, (Autry, 2019).

5- Diversity and Managing a Diverse Workforce:

Source: media.licdn

With the advancement of technology, fair trade, and Globalization, the world has turned into a small village, that affects humans, countries, as well as companies, and organizations around the world. Companies now have easy international market access and outreach and have customers from all around the world. To best serve them, they should diversify their products of course. But to do that they need to have a diverse human capital that can tackle plans, and make sure the organization's international outreach is achieved. Even if it were local incorporation or organization, you still find many cultures and diverse groups within one community and that could create a challenge for HR professionals to manage diverse groups within a local team. While following all the company policies and by-laws HR needs to make sure to create a welcoming and comfortable organizational environment. That could be implemented by creating cultural awareness programs that could help employees integrate, work together, and understand the benefits of diverse groups. 

6-   Build Experience Workforce:

      As discussed in point number two, hiring, and attracting talents is one big challenge, but keeping them and ensuring their loyalty is becoming a bigger challenge for HR professionals. It is important for companies to keep their expert employees and have a low turnover rate. That could be done by ensuring that the employees are satisfied with their jobs, the workplace, the organizational behaviour, and the people. When employees are glad about their jobs and responsibilities, they are less likely to seek employment elsewhere. That could be done by creating a unique employee experience that will beat the competitors by offering training programs and modern workplaces, flexible work time, and other incentives. We see live examples of such initiatives at some organizations like Google, Apple, Linked In, and others, their successful plan to acquire talents and retain expertise tells us the future of work. 

Conclusion:

            The competitive world is moving towards digitalisation. Technological growth is bringing crucial challenges to Human resource management. As a pillar of the organisation, we need to adapt to modern technologies and go forward. Some of them need to be implemented immediately and some others can be adapted gradually. However, we need to change from time to time. Which will contribute to achieving the organisation's goals.

 

 

References

            Autry, A. (2019, January 7). 2018 employee engagement & loyalty statistics. The Access Perks Employee Benefits Blog. https://blog.accessperks.com/2018-employee-engagement-loyalty-statistics

            Lewis, N. (2020, April 23). HR managers rethink their role during the coronavirus pandemic. Society of Human Resource Management. https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-news/pages/hr-managers-rethink-their-work-coronavirus-pandemic.aspx

            Society of Human Resource Management. (2021, April 16). Managing for employee retention. SHRM. https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/toolkits/pages/managingforemployeeretention.aspx

            SpriggHR. (2020, September 29). The top HR challenges to overcome in 2020. https://sprigghr.com/blog/hr-professionals/the-top-hr-challenges-to-overcome-in-2020/

Bibliography

Alkosani, A. (2022) Emerging HR - challenges and recommendations, LinkedIn. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/emerging-hr-challenges-recommendations-ahmad-alkosani (Accessed: March 18, 2023).